Straw Blowers (Farming Simulator 17)
Category:Farming Simulator 17 A Straw Blower is an in Farming Simulator 17 designed to turn of back into loose Straw. It is primarily used to immediately dump that Straw into a or . The Straw Blower has a simple open storage bay that can be filled with Bales using a or similar device. Once it detects a bale in its storage bay, it can be ordered to shred that bale and unload the material into a Cow Pasture or Pig Sty to provide those animals with Straw Bedding - which allows the animals to produce . Alternatively, a Straw Blower can simply be used to shred bales and dump the loose Straw on the ground in a . This is an easy way to convert Straw from one form to the other. A can then be used to convert the Straw back into Bale form. Farming Simulator 17 offers only one model of Straw Blower - the . It isn't a very cheap machine, but a single one can be used to handle all the Straw conversions you might need. Straw Blowers are in direct competition with , which can perform the same function as a Straw Blower and work with bales of other types - and can create . Nonetheless, Straw Blowers are far cheaper than Mixer Wagons, and are simpler to use. Important Note: In the current iteration of Farming Simulator 17, there is no real need to use a Straw Blower. You can feed Straw Bales directly into the while they are still intact. This tool only makes sense for players who want to run their farms as close to realism as possible. List of Straw Blowers Loading Bales The first step to using a Straw Blower is to fill it up with . A Straw Blower can only work with bales, but it can use bales of any shape - whether Square or Round. The easiest way to load Bales into the Straw Blower is with a fitted with a or . Stick the fork into a bale, lift it up over the side of the Straw Blower, and then angle the fork down so that the bale falls into the Straw Blower's storage bay. Alternatively, you can lower the bale until it is just inside the storage bay, and back the Loader away so that the bale is pulled off the fork. Another option is to load the bales through the Straw Blower's rear ramp. To do this, first open the ramp , then place a bale on top of the ramp and close it back up . This works best with Round Bales, but can work with Square Bales as well. A Straw Blower does not have a maximum capacity; You can load in as many bales as you can make fit inside the storage bay. Four Square Bales can fit in there when standing up on their thin side. You can fit 5 or more Round Bales in, lying on their round side on top of one another. A Straw Blower will automatically detect when a Bale is inside it. When driving a vehicle attached to the Straw Blower, you can see the amount of Straw left in the bale in the lower-right corner of the screen. If there is more than one bale inside the Straw Blower, it will only acknowledge the existence of one of those bales (showing how much Straw is left in that specific bale), but can nonetheless shred all of them. Note: Do not put non-Straw bales into a Straw Blower! It will not be able to shred them, and getting them out of the machine is extremely difficult! Unloading The purpose of a Straw Blower is to turn the loaded into it into loose . It has no other function. Once a bale is properly placed inside the storage bay of the machine, the Straw Blower can unload loose Straw directly into an , increasing the amount of Straw in the pen. This can only be done at the or , and only at very specific locations near the pen. As long as these animals have any amount of Straw left in their pen, they will continue to produce . When the Straw runs out, Manure production will stop completely. The unique locations to unload straw vary from one Animal Pen to the next, and may also be in different locations on different maps. In , for example, the Straw unloading point at the Cow Pasture is directly in front of the large Cow Shed, where accumulates. At the Pig Sty on the same map, the Straw unloading point is around the rear side of the pen, directly opposite from where Animal Dirt accumulates. You can turn on markers for these (and all other) unloading points in your "General Settings Menu", by setting "Interactive Zone Markers" to "ON". To unload at one of these spots, simply pull the Straw Blower into that spot and hit the "Unload" button . This will cause the machine to start blowing Straw into the animal pen. Note that the animation may look like the Straw Blower is blowing the straw in the wrong direction - its pipe can only shoot straw to the right. However, as long as the Straw Blower is standing in the correct location, the straw will end up in the pen no matter what it looks like on the screen. If you try to unload at an incorrect location, you'll instead get a flashing message saying "Straw is not accepted here". There is no way to accidentally unload straw at the wrong place using this method. The machine will continue blowing straw into the pen until one of the following occurs: # The current Straw Bale being shredded runs out of Straw. # The machine is moved away from the unloading location. # The Unload button is pressed again. # The Animal Pen runs out of storage space for Straw. When a Straw Bale runs out of straw, it disappears. The Straw Blower will then check to see whether there are any other Straw Bales in its storage bay. If it finds another bale, it will now "target" that bale and will shred that next. You'll need to press the Unload button again to start shredding another bale. Note that if any bales are stacked on top of one another inside the storage bale, any depleted bale will disappear and allow others to drop down further into the bay. Each Animal Pen has a maximum amount of Straw storage capacity. This amount increases with each additional animal you add to that pen. Therefore, the more animals you have, the more Straw can be unloaded into the pen until it is full. When you run out of space, a flashing message on the screen will say that you can only store as much Straw as the animals require for 6 days, but in reality they take much longer than that to deplete all of the straw. Manual Unloading Instead of dumping into an , a Straw Blower can also dump it on the ground, creating a of loose straw. This pile can later by picked up by a and turned back into bale form, or scooped up by a (using a or ) and poured elsewhere (or into a ). To do this, all you need is to pull the Straw Blower away from any unloading spot, and hit the correct button combination for "Unload Here" . Manual Unloading always dumps the straw on the right side of the Straw Blower. Note that you may need to move the Straw Blower a little while doing this to make room for more straw on the ground - a single bale creates more straw that can be piled in just one location. You can stop Manual Unloading at any time by hitting the "Unload Here" button again . It will automatically stop if the current bale runs out of Straw, or if there is no more room on the ground to continue unloading. Unloading Bug An unfortunate bug in the game may occur when unloading: The bale being shredded will disappear, despite some straw still being left inside it. This causes the machine to register that it has bales inside with some straw, but cannot unload those bales or that straw under any circumstances or by any method. This bug does not prevent the machine from working as normal - you can still load it with Bales and use it to shred them. However the game will display that a bale is inside the machine even if there's no actual bales in it - and won't give you the option to unload it. This bug occurs most frequently when Manually Unloading bales (see above). Comparison with Mixer Wagons Straw Blowers are not the only machines that can be used to shred Straw Bales. They are in direct competition with , which can perform this job as well as several others. Mixer Wagons can shred bales and unload them into , or on the ground, just like a Straw Blower can. Additionally, they can do the same thing with almost any kind of bale, including and (but not ). Furthermore, Mixer Wagons can be used for a completely different purpose: Mixing together bales of and (with optional ) to create . This is something a Straw Blower simply cannot do at all. The main downside to Mixer Wagons is their price: The cheapest model available in the base game is twice as expensive as a Straw Blower. Another important downside is that you need to make sure a Mixer Wagon is completely empty before using it to shred any type of bales, otherwise you may end up accidentally creating instead. As a result, it is often better to use a Straw Blower for straw-related activities, and purchase a separate Mixer Wagon specifically for making Power Food - although the Mixer Wagon can still be used as an alternative for a Straw Blower if you have no other choice. A Cosmetic Tool A Straw Blower has two functions, as described above: Adding to an , and breaking Straw back into loose material. Unfortunately, in Farming Simulator 17, there is no need for a special machine to do the former, and there should be little need for any machine to do the latter. This puts the usefulness of a Straw Blower into question. Blowing Straw into an Animal Pen is a completely redundant action. Both Straw Bales and Loose Straw can be fed into a Straw Unloading spot (see above) as they are, with no need for a separate machine to do the job. The same you use to place the Bales into the Straw Blower can simply place that bale in the Straw Unloading spot, and it will be automatically added to the animals' straw reserves. In fact, why even turn the Straw into bales in the first place, when a can pick it up and dump it into the animal pens the same way? As to turning straw Bales back into loose straw - there should be no real reason to do this. Straw is only used in feeding animals and in creating , and in both cases you can use bales just as easily as loose straw. The only reason you might have to do this is in case you regret having created Straw Bales for any reason, and wish to store them in a or inside a rather than in bale stacks. The bottom line is that Straw Blowers are a waste of money for a player who is focused on efficiency. On the other hand, the use of a Straw Blower to spread one's straw inside an animal pen does simulate the reality of more closely. Therefore, Straw Blowers are more of a cosmetic, role-playing-oriented piece of machinery than an actual handy tool.